Windows 10 boot puzzle

Bleamoor

Member
I am running Windows 10.00.14393 with a SSD as the system drive. My apps are on drive D and data is on drive E. I used SiSoft Sandra to find out that I have a BIOS and there is a secure boot. The computer boots perfectly (so why am I writing this)? Read on....

I used Acronis True Image 2017 to backup the system, and created two rescue disks, one was the standard (Linux?), and the other one was WinPE.

If I use the normal disk and reboot, I get to a choice menu of True image 32 or 64 bit, with a highlighted choice of ‘start Windows’. (I don’t want to restore a working system; I just wanted to see that I could start Windows from this point).

When I pressed enter (or waited a while), I got ‘MBR3 error’, followed quickly by a blue background screen headed ‘Recovery’, with the following message:

‘The application or OS couldn’t be loaded because a file is missing, or contains errors.’ The file is \windows\system32\winload.exe’ code 0xc000000e. Pressing enter or F8 does nothing.

When I rebooted with a Windows repair disk, I followed the following steps:

Set uk kybd, troubleshoot, start up repair, windows10. The messages ‘diagnosing your PC’, ‘attempting repairs’, then ‘couldn’t repair’ appeared. (The same thing happens with the WinPE disk)

The reason for asking for help is that I would like to know what I should do; why does the use of a rescue boot disk not work to get me into Windows? If there was something ‘unauthorised’ from Acronis in the MBR, then why does my PC boot normally without rescue disks? I have thought about using ‘bootfix’ but my computer doesn’t seem to have it installed in system32. Is Easybcd the answer; Acronis have been trying for a while to get me one?

I’d be grateful for any help you can give.
 
I'm a little confused as to what works and what doesn't in your environment. The MBR3 error indicates invalid data in the bootsector or MBR, booting your PC with a recovery CD in the drive uses the "MBR" on the CD instead of the one on your disk which can bypass the issue?
 
I'm a little confused as to what works and what doesn't in your environment. The MBR3 error indicates invalid data in the bootsector or MBR, booting your PC with a recovery CD in the drive uses the "MBR" on the CD instead of the one on your disk which can bypass the issue?
Thanks for your reply. Basically, I am getting help from Acronis (and the issue seems to be exercising them). The basic issue is as I said. Viz My computer boots up perfectly all the time. I backup the drives on a regular basis, and created a rescue disk. I thought I would test this one day, put the CD in the CD drive, restarted the computer and ended up at an Acronis recovery screen. The highlighted option was Windows. If I choose this, then I get the MBR errors etc, as previously described, together with blue Recovery screen. One problem is that I have no idea what files should be in the system32 folder on a freshly installed copy of Windows 10. Some appear to be missing, but my PC boots perfectly; hence the confusion on my part. I may try earlier versions of Acronis, to see if that works. If it does, then that would indicate a problem with Acronis, as you seemed to imply.
 
OK, I understand. This would be a problem with Acronis attempting to re-create the boot on the cloned drive instead of keeping it as-is. A lot of cloning software fails to correctly re-configure the boot profiles post-clone and we've seen a lot of issues like this in the past.

You could try using EasyRE on the cloned copy to see if that takes care of the problem, but it may not be worth it given that your PC is working...
 
Back
Top